


Faces in the Drift

by fmo



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, F/M, Identity Porn, Mako gets to be the more supportive one, T rating for descriptions of this death, There's a death in Anchorage just like in canon, warning for talk of mental health issues and prejudices against them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Anchorage, one Becket brother survives. He looks like Yancy, but he says he's Raleigh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faces in the Drift

When they finally found him in a tiny hospital outside Anchorage, he was just floating along the edge of consciousness.

 

“Yancy,” they said. They’d brought medical equipment, sensors to track how his brain was responding to being severed from the Drift. “Yancy, can you hear me?”

 

“Raleigh,” he said. He was chasing the RABIT inside his own head: a vision of his brother being torn from the Conn-Pod in a claw the size of a pickup truck, bright blue like a huge child’s toy. He’d never seen a kaiju with his own eyes before, but he’d seen toys like that being sold with Happy Meals last year. Kaiju and Jaegers, Gipsy too.

 

“Yancy,” they said. “If you can hear me, try to look at me. Look at my face.”

 

“Raleigh,” he said, finally turning to look at a face he vaguely knew, hovering beyond the visions of kaiju and his brother’s memories. “M’Raleigh.” His mouth was full of sea water and other, past words.

 

“He’s gone, Yancy,” they said. A comforting hand on his shoulder. He was wearing a hospital gown.

 

“No,” he said, before the face vanished again behind his mother’s or his brother’s. “I’m Raleigh.”

 

* * *

 

 

During the days when he was lying in bed while his stitches and his bones healed, they sent someone to talk to him who, he later realized, was a psychiatrist. “What do you remember about . . . the engagement in Anchorage?” she asked.

 

“Look,” he said, trying to sit up. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I know my brother died. But that was Yancy. I know, I _remember_ him being pulled out of my brain. I’m Raleigh.”

 

The psychiatrist handed him a little hand mirror. “What name matches with the face you see?” she said.

 

And he looked. He’d glimpsed himself in the bathroom, a face and body wrecked with bruises and his own confusion. Yeah, it looked like Yancy’s face, but Yancy wasn’t there in those eyes. “I get it. I know it looks like Yancy,” he said. “But it’s me. I’m Raleigh. I’m tired of saying it.”

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, he healed up and they let him go. He worked on the Wall with a ration card that said Yancy Louis Becket, because nobody would give him another one and he had to eat. The people he worked with just called him Becket.

 

In glimpses of his face, from polished steel surfaces and dark windows, he saw the memory of his brother, moments before his death. It was Yancy’s bones, Yancy’s scars, a constant reminder of the one thing he wanted to forget. But he couldn’t get past it, because it was there every day, looking back at him.

 

When Marshall Pentecost landed outside the construction side, Raleigh expected the typical strategy to avoid the issue: _Mr. Becket_. But then Pentecost said, “How do you want to die, Raleigh? Here? Or in a Jaeger?”

 

Pentecost didn’t even hesitate when he said it. It was the first time anyone had called Raleigh by his own name in five years.

 

Raleigh looked up. “In a Jaeger, sir,” he said.

 

* * *

 

 

Surrounded by the walls of rain that greeted him as he landed at the Shatterdome, Raleigh was prepared for the looks askance, the muttering that would follow him. He knew they all thought that his mind had been damaged by the severed neural handshake, or that he was grieving so deeply for his brother that he’d taken on his brother’s identity.  Raleigh wasn’t even sure to what extent Pentecost was just indulging him with the name because he needed a pilot so badly; as Pentecost had said, he was the only Mark III pilot left, confused about his name or not.

 

All that, though, was less important than piloting a Jaeger again.  Or so Raleigh thought until Marshall Pentecost introduced him to Mako Mori, who immediately became at least as important as Jaegers, if not more so. But he couldn't quite pin down her angle. She'd said that he was different than she’d imagined; different how, he wondered. Not Raleigh? Not Yancy? Not crazy? Suddenly her opinion mattered a lot.

 

She also didn’t say anything specific about his past as she showed him to her room, although she said she’d trained at the Academy, which meant she had to know a little about him. So Raleigh didn’t broach the subject, no matter how much he wanted to know what she'd thought of his fights. Of  _him_.  But it wasn't like she just brushed him off, either. If he was feeling arrogant he'd say she lingered nearer to him than she needed to, just like he'd gravitated toward her. He was pretty sure she'd taken note of what all those years of climbing and welding had given his body when she'd seen him shirtless. But there was the problem again. 

 

He hadn’t exactly dated since it had happened, he thought as he leafed through his photos of Yancy. Not of him, of Yancy, because this was Yancy when the pictures had been taken.  The body he wore now wasn't really his, and he hadn’t known how to feel when women—the few women he’d encountered while working on the wall—looked appreciatively at it. There was always that question: would they have felt the same way, looking at Raleigh’s face, his old face?

 

He just wanted Mako to understand. That he really was Raleigh. When she’d pointed out the new Gipsy Danger to him, and told him how she’d rebuilt it herself, she’d already stepped closer to him than anyone had in a long time. Mako’s knowing Gipsy was like knowing him. And part of Gipsy belonged to Mako, now, too. Through Gipsy, they were linked.

 

As for everyone else on the Shatterdome, Raleigh was fortunate. The Wei triplets and the Kaidonovskys were involved in their own stuff and/or too busy to bother fucking with the new guy, and the two scientists Raleigh had met were way too focused on their own particular interests to spend time thinking about a new human nearby. The first real problem turned out to be the younger Hansen, the one who seemed like kind of an asshole.

 

“So what’s your name?” Hansen leaned forward in the hallway. Too much pent-up aggression, and nothing to do with it but this.

 

Raleigh knew better. “You know what it is.”

 

Turned out Hansen had a lot to say about Raleigh’s work on the wall and his sanity, insanity or general competence to be a pilot, but by that point it was all old; Raleigh’d heard it all before. The older Hansen apologized, but Raleigh got the impression that he was too tired to care what Raleigh called himself.

 

Raleigh still didn’t know what Mako thought.

 

* * *

 

The next day brought the trials to match him with his new co-pilot. The candidates, though, seemed not quite so eager to be matched with him, the pilot who had notoriously lost his mind in the Drift. Raleigh consequently wasn’t too keen on them, either; he couldn’t Drift with someone who didn’t trust him.

 

All the while, Mako watched him with a note of disappointment, and Raleigh was aware of how, even now, he wasn’t quite used to the reach of his arms or the strength in his legs. Every once in a while, an instant of uncertainty would wash over him: where are my hands? Why can I see so sharply?

 

He asked her to fight him because he wanted to see if she did trust him. After her first touch, he knew that she did; she was prepared to fight him with everything she had, and that was a kind of trust. And when he was fighting her, his body stopped feeling like it didn’t quite fit.

 

If anyone could be his co-pilot, he knew then it would be her. “We’re Drift-compatible,” he said, looking at Mako. “You feel it too, right?”

 

Breathing fast, she looked at him. But then she looked back to Marshall Pentecost, who closed the subject.

 

And Raleigh was left to wait to meet his new co-pilot. It would be someone else he’d met that day, someone who would never have drifted before. And someone whose neural handshake with him wouldn’t hold if they didn’t believe he was who he said he was. Someone who wasn't Mako.

 

Raleigh had to believe that Pentecost was protecting Mako because he believed Raleigh’s mind wasn’t a safe place for her to share. There was no other reason—she’d said she’d scored a kill on every single simulated drop. She was the ideal pilot. But Raleigh wasn't.

 

The thing was, Raleigh understood that it didn’t make sense for him to be Raleigh in what had been Yancy’s body. Maybe it was some kind of side-effect of the Drift, he didn’t know. He knew that it seemed impossible. He barely remembered the incident in Anchorage, and tried not to think about what he did remember. But he _wasn’t_ Yancy, even if ghost images of Yancy from the drift still sparked in his mind on occasion. Raleigh was the little brother, the spoiled brat. Yancy was the big brother, the one who’d always had to be a little bit older under Raleigh’s gaze. Raleigh knew who he was, and that had never changed, despite the body he was wearing. Sometimes the body he wore was a Jaeger, too, but that didn't mean that Raleigh stopped being Raleigh.

 

As the time came for him to meet his new co-pilot in Gipsy, Raleigh tried to put these thoughts out of his mind. Anxieties and worries didn’t help the free-flowing Drift; that was why he and Yancy, not worriers by nature, had always Drifted so well. 

 

Raleigh decided it was best to act like it was no big deal when he heard his co-pilot come up beside him. “My left side isn’t my best,” he said, not saying, _I was injured, Gipsy was injured on the left, while I was still me,_ “so I’ll take the right, if you’re okay with that.”

 

“Sure,” said Mako. Her smile was that rare, wonderful, I’m-so-excited-I-don’t-even-want-you-to-know-how-excited-I-am kind of smile.

 

Raleigh knew he said things after that, things that were supposed to be knowledgeable and reassuring, but all he was thinking was along the lines of what her smile said. _I’m going to drift with Mako. With Mako._

 

“Don’t chase the RABIT,” he warned her again, and then their neural handshake was being started.

 

He tried to let his thoughts, well, drift, as they interspersed with hers.

 

Mako under her umbrella on the deck of the Shatterdome.

 

Mako as a child, sitting on the floor and drawing.

 

“Kaiju groupie!” He wasn't sure if that one was Mako or him . . . 

 

“I have good news and bad news.”

 

Mako again. “Three-two.”

 

“Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills.”

 

“Don’t get cocky.”

 

Oh, shit.

 

And then Raleigh was in Gipsy Danger again, except he was on the _left_ side, and Knifehead was lying still in the water, and he knew what was about to happen and what was happening but he couldn’t prevent it. The memory was locked in, like a train on its tracks heading to a collision.

 

And Mako was there, still in her Drivesuit but detached from Gipsy, and looking between Raleigh and Yancy.

 

Raleigh.

 

Yancy.

 

Mako.

 

“Raleigh!” And then that was Mako calling to him, reaching toward him but never quite able to break through the memory and touch. “Raleigh!”

 

He was just able to turn and glance at her when Knifehead rose out of the water and tore at Gipsy. He tried to charge the Plasmacaster but the kaiju tore at his shoulder and he screamed.

 

And Mako watched in horror as Knifehead carved a wide gash into Gipsy’s left shoulder and reached in with its claws to grab Raleigh and pull him out, fast as flying.

 

Yancy was reaching a helpless arm toward him. “Raleigh—“

 

The connections holding him to Gipsy were about to snap—

 

“—listen to me!”

 

And then—

 

 _Yancy_ was in Knifehead’s claw, and _Raleigh_ was in Yancy’s Drivesuit and Yancy’s body on the right side of Gipsy.

 

In the last moment, before the Drift snapped, Raleigh felt something from his brother that wasn’t despair or fear: it was a strange kind of joy, tempered with sadness.

 

And then Yancy was gone.

 

Only a moment later, the Drift was forcibly cut off and Raleigh was resting against Mako on the floor, encircled by her arms. “Raleigh,” he heard her saying. “Raleigh. It's okay.” She was reassuring herself, too, he thought, with the repetition. As people often did when there was nothing else they could do.

 

* * *

 

 The unpleasant sense of déjà vu was complete when Raleigh regained consciousness later in a hospital bed in the medical bay. Of course, this time there was also a sense of embarrassment: an experienced pilot like him shouldn’t have chased the RABIT so badly. Especially not on a rookie partner's first Drift.

 

As soon as Raleigh was pronounced free of nosebleeds or other physical effects, he left to head straight for Mako’s room. Raleigh had no idea if Marshall Pentecost was going to ground him after what had happened, but before anything else Raleigh had to apologize to Mako.

 

Luckily, there were no stir-crazy Hansens in the hallway as Raleigh knocked on Mako’s metal door. More surprisingly, the Mako who opened the door didn’t seem unhappy. In fact, she had an air of satisfaction, as if she’d just solved a really difficult puzzle.

 

Raleigh stepped in and took a deep breath. “Look, Mako—“

 

“I already told Marshall Pentecost what I saw in your memory,” she said.

 

“Oh,” he said. That wasn’t quite what he’d expected her to say. “Okay.”

 

Mako frowned slightly. “Raleigh, do you realize what you remembered?”

 

Raleigh didn’t really want to say it. “Anchorage. My brother dying.”

 

“Yes, but—I saw what your brother did for you.” Mako turned away quickly, then turned back and centered her stance. “In the Drift, Yancy took your place. While you were still joined in the neural handshake, he put his own mind into your body—the one that was about to die—and let your mind go into his body, to survive. He saved you.”

 

The vision, the _sensation_ echoed back to Raleigh then, of the single moment that he had always avoided thinking about. Even today it had been so tangled in confusion and pain and the Drift. The instant when—when instead of Raleigh being torn away, it was Yancy. “He could do that?” Raleigh said, just as he realized that that was exactly what Yancy had done.

 

Yancy had done it intentionally.  Yancy had taken Raleigh's place.

 

“We don’t know the limits of what’s possible in the Drift,” Mako said. “But I saw it. I experienced it with you.” She stood still, close to him, in that quiet moment, but her voice was certain. 

 

“Fucking hell,” Raleigh said. But it was okay; this was Mako who was with him. Brilliant Mako. His co-pilot. “Thank you,” he said. “That was a hell of a first Drift. I’m sorry, Mako.”

 

 “This will just make the rest of them feel easier,” Mako said. And she smiled.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this story, I would love to hear your comments! Thanks : )


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